It depends on how long you use it:

Year 1: Ok, this is kinda cool, but why does it keep fucking breaking?

Year 2: How is it still fucking breaking?

Year 3: I just don't fucking care why it keeps breaking. I think I hate this program.

Year 4: I hate this program

Year 5: Let the hate flow through you, consume you. Feel the dark side flowing through your fingertips. Yes. Good. Why is it breaking? It's the end users. Yes... they've been plotting against you from the beginning - hiding columns, erasing formulas and even...

merging cells

Que heavy breathing through a respirator.

Year 6: It's a board meeting. They ask you if you can average all the moving averages of average sales per month and provide an exponential trendline to forecast growth on five million rows of data.

You say "sure, boss, I can knock that for you in Excel in about an hour or two."

Your team leader interjects "I believe what he was trying to say was we'll use Tableau and it will take about a month."

You turn to him with a steely glare.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

Year 7: Your team leader is gone after you pointed out he fucked up one of your sheets that run the business by merging a cell. All data flows through you and the holy spreadsheet, and the board is terrified of firing you because no one knows how your sheets work but you and their entire inventory system would collapse if you leave.

But then the inevitable happens. Dissension in the ranks. The juniors talk of python, R, Tableau, Power BI - anything to release your dark hold upon the holy data. You could crush them all with a xlookup chain faster than they can type a SELECT statement. The Rebellion is coming, but you're ready. You've discovered the Data Model, capable of building a relational database behind the hidden moons of Power Pivot, parsing tens of millions of rows - and your Death Star is almost complete.

You're ready to unleash your dark fury when the fucking spreadsheet breaks again.

Year 8: New company. They ask if you know Excel. You just start cackling with a addictive gleam in your eye as tears start streaming down your face.

They hire you on the spot.

All they use is Excel. And Access.

You think, ok, this is kinda cool, but why does it keep fucking breaking?

So all the discourse around lemmy.ml has made it clear to me that Lemmy's primary org has fallen prey to a key problem I've experienced running multiple social media sites and seen in my professional life as well.

And it boils down to this:

The tech guys are trying to be moderators. These are two entirely separate jobs that need completely different types of people to successfully execute the role.

Tech folk are brilliant in their subject, but often terrible at understanding people, social dynamics, and the limits of acceptable discourse. Their profession requires them to spend enormous amounts of time alone, which limits their real world experience, often to a crippling degree.

Good moderators (what used to be publishers and editors in the days of print) are those who understand people like tech folk understand SQL. They understand the multiple layers of subcontext that can be derived from an innocent sounding statement, and they have an innate sense of social dynamics and what is of interest to their audience. They also know how to speak to their audience and promote good content.

Most importantly, they understand that they are the gatekeepers of the publication's reputation, and safeguard it by being as impartial and fair as possible... a lesson the moderators of lemmy.ml have clearly failed to learn.

The only way to solve this dilemma in Lemmy.org's case is this:

1. Separate the mod and dev teams. Devs should not mod, and mods should not dev

2. Abandon or spin off lemmy.ml to folks not on the dev team - the fact that the instance is run by members of the dev team taints the reputation of the entire project and infrastructure. I do believe in free speech, but in this case, the reputational damage lemmy.ml has caused to the financial state of the dev team is too great to ignore.

3. Lemmy.org needs to clearly state this delineation and prevent the official dev team from running instances officially attached to lemmy.org.

If this doesn't happen, I think that donations will continue to decrease until the project starves. There is great value in what the dev team has done, but unless they abandon lemmy.ml and focus entirely on development, I think this project will fail financially unless another dev team with a better rep takes their place.

Mass media is actively suppressing them:

Link to full article from WagingNonViolence.org

Historical context - Germany, March 5, 1933:

On March 5, 1933, the government held an election for control of the Reichstag. The Nazis won 288 seats (43.9% of the vote).

The Communists won 81 seats (12.3%), even though their representatives were unable to claim those seats—if they appeared in public, they faced immediate arrest. Other opposition parties also won significant numbers of seats. The Social Democrats captured 119 seats (18.3%), and the Catholic Center Party won 73 seats (11.2%). Together, the Communist, Social Democratic, and Catholic Center Parties won nearly as many seats as the Nazis. But their members distrusted one another almost as much as they feared the Nazis.

As a result, these parties were unable to mount a unified opposition to the Nazi Party.

Still under Nazi control, the Reichstag passed a new law on March 21, 1933, that made it a crime to speak out against the new government or criticize its leaders. Known as the Malicious Practices Act, the law made even the smallest expression of dissent a crime. Those who were accused of “gossiping” or “making fun” of government officials could be arrested and sent to prison or a concentration camp.

Then, on March 24, 1933, the Reichstag passed what became known as the Enabling Act by a vote of 141 to 94. It “enabled” the chancellor of Germany to punish anyone he considered an “enemy of the state.” The act allowed “laws passed by the government” to override the constitution. Only the 94 Social Democrats voted against the law. Most of the other deputies who opposed it were in hiding, in prison, or in exile.

That same day, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, then police commissioner for the city of Munich, held a news conference to announce the opening of the first concentration camp near Dachau, Germany. According to Himmler, the camp would have the capacity to hold 5,000 people, including Communist Party members and Social Democrats “who threaten the security of the state.” Himmler continued, according to a newspaper report:

Throughout the spring and early summer of 1933, the Nazis used the new laws to frighten and intimidate Germans. By May, they forced all trade labor unions to dissolve. Instead, workers could only belong to a Nazi-approved union called the German Labor Front.

Posted this before, but seems apropos to mention it here as well.

Honestly, most new games just fucking suck. They're too expensive, often don't run properly at launch even on excellent hardware, and those that don't have micro-transactions built-in require you to purchase DLC to get the whole game.

On the other hand, the older titles almost always run well on my machine, have a ton of community DLC, and in general are just designed better because they were built to bring the player as much fun as possible, not to extract as much money as possible.

Plus, the quality content generated from 2005 - 2015 represents some of the best ever, and can provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment before you even get into the 2010s. Why waste money on something that may not work, and that I likely won't enjoy as much as the games I bought 10 years ago?

It's why I usually wait at least a year after release to consider whether or not I'm going to buy a title.

The hero we wanted, but didn't deserve

Ya know, Elon...

Obligatory Saint Luigi blessing for the banned:

remember kids:

A place in heaven is reserved for those who speak truth to power

It's time for a nationwide movement to dox ICE agents.

Luigi represents the biggest possible threat to the established order. You can win a war, crush a revolution, and even enslave a people, but it doesn't change the basic math:

A lone gunman can be just as powerful as any CEO, politician, or king in the right moment.

That's the real message that they're trying to suppress, because they know he's going to have copycats as they tighten the noose on the working class.

Ok, this part is pretty cool:

Thunderbird Assist will also be available. This experimental feature, developed in collaboration with Flower AI, offers optional artificial intelligence functionalities for users who want them while also addressing privacy concerns head-on. On devices robust enough to handle AI models locally, Thunderbird Assist processes everything on the user’s own machine.

However, for users on less powerful hardware, the development team has integrated NVIDIA’s confidential computing to keep any remote processing secure. Rest assured, those who prefer to skip AI services can continue using Thunderbird without these extras.

I've been unwilling to touch cloud based AI, much less expose my emails to it as there's no guarantee of privacy, but being able to run a local model allows you the functionality without the risk. Haven't used Thunderbird in years, but this is tempting me to give it another shot.

More people showed up in DC yesterday (100k ) than at Jan 6th (80k high estimate - snopes.com ).

This is the beginning, not the end result. Protest activity is off the charts and rising steadily:

Link to full article from WagingNonViolence.org

These movements take time to build, but this one is building much faster than previous efforts. I've been on the front lines since the 2nd Iraq War protests (which were huge) and this movement is already larger, smarter, and more organized.

It is making a difference - don't allow yourself to believe otherwise. You can see the cracks starting already with the infighting at the top of Trump's team and the defection of key republicans.

They're just as scared of our mob as they are of theirs.

Because we're stronger than they are - there are a lot more of us - and we have REAL cause to be angry now.

Comparison of Nazi salute circa 1940 to Musk salute circa 2025:

Video of repeated Nazi salutes at Trump's Inauguration

Welcome to the Fediverse! If you've been on Reddit for 14 years, you were attracted to what it once was. Lemmy is that, but a whole lot better, and your skills as a moderator will be highly valued here. In fact, if you are looking to start up any new communities hmu and I'll see about giving you a hand.

Also, here's your obligatory Saint Luigi blessing for the banned:

remember kids:

A place in heaven is reserved for those who speak truth to power

Go baby go!

It's working kids - despite the blackout from the mass media, people are taking to the streets:

Link to full article from WagingNonViolence.org

Where you came from:

Where you are now:

remember kids:

A place in heaven is reserved for those who speak truth to power

The Democratic Party on the whole is captured by the donor class as a direct result of Citizens United. This has led to the hollowing out of the grassroots movements that are necessary for a large coalition of diverse interests to compete against the oligarchic cabal that makes up the GOP. This decimated the rank and file operatives that used networking within their communities to create political action and replaced it with endless fundraising emails, even as the primary process was corrupted (Hillary v Bernie, Biden v Bernie) to remove clout from the progressive wing of the party.

This led to the disillusionment of many Democratic voters that they have any say in the nomination process (the last time we had a real primary was Obama 2008 - almost 20 years ago), and the result is a slate of weak centrist candidates that for the most part play lip service to liberal cultural issues while blocking any real progressive economic progress.

The purpose of the Democratic Party apparatus as it exists in 2025 America is to capture and dilute revolutionary energy, so that people don't take to the streets and demand real change. Yes, there are some independents and good folks within the Democratic Party trying to make a change (AOC, Jasmine Crocket) but the power players (Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries) are still refusing to stand up to the overt fascist takeover of our country.

The system as it exists will not change, and without change, we're barreling into a fascism induced depression and possible civil war that will likely ravage the planet.